Charles BAUDELAIRE – Autograph letter signed to Paul Meurice.

Have you received Delâtre's package for Mr. Hugo?

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Charles Baudelaire (1821.1867)

Autograph letter signed to Paul Meurice.

A page in-4°. Autograph address again initialed by Baudelaire.

[Paris]. Wednesday December 21 [18]59. Delicate restoration on the back of the first leaf.

“My dear Friend, I want to show De Calonne and Malassis this evening the terrible drawings , with a new package that I have just received, to give them an idea of the planned article. Be good enough to send me the box. Have you received Delâtre's package for Mr. Hugo? Pay my respects to Madame Meurice. Baudelaire »

Baudelaire here evokes the awful drawings of Constantin Guys ( awful in the moral sense: these drawings by Guys representing women) for which he wrote a laudatory essay The Painter of Modern Life .

Baudelaire had written, on December 13, a long letter to Victor Hugo, copying to the great man his critical work on the Salon of 1859 and informing him of a publication of views of Paris, by MM. Meryon and Delâtre, which he wished to send to him: “ I learn with great pleasure that Mr. Meryon and his publisher and friend, Mr. Delâtre, intend to send you a copy of the beautiful compositions from some points of view of Paris, which one drew and engraved, and which the other, an artist himself, carefully printed. I am taking this opportunity to attach an extract from a work on the Fine Arts in which your name has once again come to my pen. You are in exile; Isn't this the most opportune time to pay you my court? …”